AFTERMATH OF THE RIOTS : City Must Repair More Than Torched Stores : Business: Damage estimated at $100 million. Officials say community’s already-tarnished image has been irreparably harmed.

It had been a symbol of hope for the city’s economic future: the Gateway Plaza, a sprawling pink stucco shopping center of about a dozen shops and a major grocery store at the corner of Rosecrans and Central avenues.

For years, city leaders had tried to woo investors to town, and the Gateway Plaza represented the first time in decades that a big-money development company had come to city leaders uninvited and eager to make a deal.

Then, last Wednesday, 50 miles away, in a suburban community many Compton residents couldn’t find on a map, a jury found four Los Angeles police officers not guilty of beating motorist Rodney G. King.

In a matter of hours, pieces of the Gateway Plaza went up in smoke--and with the flames came frustration, despair and the cruel realization that after finally reaching some measure of economic success, the city had once again been driven to its knees.

“It was not just the fact that buildings it took years to build went down in a matter of hours,” Compton Mayor Walter Tucker III said Tuesday. “It was that Compton has had to continue to fight the negative stereotypes. With all of that, (when the riots erupted) it was like, “We already have enough. We don’t need this.’ ”

After years of white flight, abandonment by commercial investors, skyrocketing crime rates and a persistent image as the town where gangs rule, Compton now faces a new crisis.

Preliminary estimates of the damage total $100 million. Final figures show 179 buildings vandalized and 136 fires reported.

City redevelopment agency director Laurence H. Adams predicted that the city would see an estimated $500,000 drop in sales-tax revenue, in addition to untold losses in property tax, and business license and utility users’ fees. In all, Adams said, the city could see a $1-million to $2-million shortfall next fiscal year.

Yet city officials are confident that they will not be revisited by the problems left in the aftermath of the Watts riots of 1965.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, the city of Compton was still a predominantly white middle-class community with a booming commercial district, dozens of major businesses and “so many car dealerships (that) Long Beach Boulevard looked like Las Vegas at night,” recalled the Rev. Jerome Fisher.

With the riots came massive white flight--not only by residents but by businesses that left in haste for the suburbs, Adams said. Working-class blacks began moving into Compton in large numbers. The number of renters jumped in the city, and with their arrival the city’s median income dropped.

Investors turned their backs on the city, saying there was not enough money there to support businesses. In the late 1970s crime skyrocketed and, Adams said, the media cast an unrelenting spotlight on the city, reporting story after story on Compton’s troubles with gangs and drugs.

In order to lure developers, Adams said, the City Council has been forced to offer land at low prices along with free public improvements, landscaping and fast-track permit processing.

With deals like that, the city in the early 1980s was able to attract investors to help rebuild its commercial heart. The success of the Town Center and Renaissance Plaza--two of the newest and largest shopping center developments in downtown Compton--caught the attention of investors, Adams said.

In the last few years, the City Council has been in the catbird seat with developers, such as those who spent $22 million to refurbish Gateway Plaza. They came to the city to make a deal, he said.

“Now we had them at the table and they wanted to invest,” Adams said, clearly savoring the moment. “Then this disaster struck, and now we have to overcome this.”

Most of the city’s largest sales tax producers, such as Circuit City and K mart, survived the unrest unscathed. However, dozens of small businesses and the Gateway Plaza’s J. J. Newberry’s were lost.

“From J. J. Newberry’s alone, that’s about $40,000 in sales tax a year,” Adams said. “That translates into someone’s job on the city payroll.”

But the despair among community leaders already has faded with an unprecedented outpouring of support from residents, investors, and business leaders who have flocked to City Hall to offer their help. City leaders say they have a tremendous opportunity to build a better commercial Compton.

“We never would have wanted this to happen,” said Councilwoman Patricia Moore, whose district was hardest hit during the riots. “But it has, and now this is our chance. Now we have a lot of land, and we can do what we always wanted to do. The people have said, ‘We don’t want any more liquor stores, we don’t want any more Laundromats and fingernail parlors and mini-malls.’ This gives us a chance to make those wrongs right.”

Said redevelopment agency director Adams: “From the beginning I thought it was going to be better (in the long run). When I saw a liquor store on fire, I thought about how we could replace them with affordable housing or with child-care centers. We have a tremendous opportunity here.”

City officials say they have already begun a program to rebuild Compton, focusing first on raising money. Tucker said the program will be funded by a combination of federal money, low-interest loans to small businesses, charitable donations and a co-op program that would allow residents to buy into businesses.

“This is just like the Bible story of David and Goliath,” Tucker, a part-time minister, said while standing outside the burned-out husk of a mini-mall. “When David saw Goliath, he did not shrink and retreat, and we are not going to retreat from this Goliath. It is not going to be easy, but we must run to the giant.”